Chess pieces and board

I decided to make a 4.75” chess set and board. I knew it would take a while and it has taken me about 30 minutes per pawn to turn them not including 5 coats of wipe on poly with dry time between. So far I’ve turned all of the white pawns, which are curly maple. This is the first one I turned and it’s looking pretty rough, but I’ve gotten much better since I started.
It all started with these turning templates that I made. I found the design for the pieces on the web...

Here is a time lapse I made of how I turn the pieces. Keep in mind I have only turned the pawns and haven’t gotten to the more complicated pieces. Because I must be crazy I am turning the pawns first, then the rooks/castles, then knights, then bishop, queen, then king…. We’ll see if that’s how it turns out. In order of power in the game. Although the king may be the weakest. This is my second dark pawn. Six more to go then on to the back row. Thanks for lookinghttp://y...

I usually just finish the chess pieces one at a time. I wanted to be able to get a good smooth finish on them like you do on the lathe but still be able to turn another piece without having to wait for them to dry in between coats.This is what I came up with. I drilled a 1/4” hole into 3/4” dowel and inserted a 1/4” dowel to chuck in the drill. I drilled a 3/4” hole in the holder and used a round file to ream it out so there is enough play to let it spin freely. After ...

I’ve made a prototype of the knight, finally. It’s not perfect, but a good start. I’ll have to remake this one as I made a critical error in centering the cut on the front/rear view of the piece. I probably won’t post a video on this one as one piece takes me about an hour to make. I’ll post pictures as I get them done though. The eyes were made with a 1/4” forstner bit. The grooves for the hair were made with a v-groove carving chisel. All partial relief e...

I have finished with the knights. This took some doing. Mostly cuts in transverse directions on the scroll saw. Then hand carved, fluted, eyes drilled and all sanded to 600 grit. Several layers of finish with sanding between. Next stop the bishops!

Here is the latest video I’ve made in my series on chess piece making. This time it’s the bishop. This one has been the most fun to make so far. The knights were fun but so much work went into each one and they were difficult. This was a nice easy turning job with a little break to put the kerf in the top.
Thanks for watching!http://youtu.be/EgwWgVPppMw<iframe src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/EgwWgVPppMw” frameborder=”0” height=”315” width=...

Here is the latest:The pieces are all made. On to the board. Birds Eye Maple and Rosewood.I got the veneer supplies ready to go and glued each piece to the 1/2” Birch Ply after cutting them to rough width, 2.25”. I used the full length of each 12” piece of veneer and had a gap in the middle, which was fine because I had enough to get the eight strips out of it. Each strip is 24 inches long and I just cut what I needed out of it and skipped over the gap. I then cleaned up the...

Here’s a couple more pics of the progress I’ve made. I glued some veneer around the edges to fill in the gap between the fancy stuff and the edge where the board will transition into the sides. Then it was onto a lot of sanding. What I hadn’t expected was the dust from the Rosewood to stain the maple while sanding. So I sanded it down as good as I could without going through the veneer and then used a cabinet scraper to finish it off. I think it came out really nice and I ca...